As video surveillance hardware becomes IP-based, systems are able to take advantage of the network to improve efficiency and performance. Time synchronization, in which all the clocks in cameras, recording equipment, and computers have the same time, is simple to implement on the network. It utilizes a standard protocol and a network appliance known as a time server. What’s more, the time server can be legally traceable to a time authority. The result is low-cost investment protection for the video system deployment.

For more than a decade, GPS has been at the core of the navigation systems used in all types of road vehicles, train systems and marine transport vehicles. As industry moves from standalone navigation systems to the advanced multi-sensor systems used in intelligent transportation systems (ITS), GPS signals remain a key component of these systems.

The development of autonomous vehicles for road, rail and water demands a comprehensive and repeatable test plan for GNSS. This white paper discusses and outlines testing methods for GNSS performance and vulnerabilities.

In Europe, Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia, broadcasters are looking to the DVB-T2 standard to upgrade from analog transmission, their current DVB-T implementation, or as a supplemental network. Similarly, in South America, ISDB-T is being implemented. These and other standards rely more and more on single frequency networks (SFN) to efficiently utilize wireless frequency spectrum. SFNs require synchronization so for each instant of time, every transmission station is broadcasting the same digital data at the same exact frequency.

Network time service is not something many businesses think about as a key component of their critical infrastructures. In fact, it is often overlooked entirely, and in error. As a result, the network architect or engineer often defaults to an easy alternative: using a server or network switch as the source of the network clock and synchronizing these sources to Internet time servers using Network Time Protocol (NTP). This white paper discusses the risks of, and alternative solutions to, "NTP Over the Internet."

Wherever microwave links exist, the path between antennas has always required accurate antenna alignment. This process requires highly trained tower crews to physically align the antennas as well as ground technicians and sophisticated, expensive, and complex test equipment to monitor the results. The process of optimizing the transmission path of microwave communication systems is about to undergo a significant development in process, simplification and cost benefit without compromising performance or accuracy. The process can now be accomplished with the use of the Pendulum (formerly XL Microwave) Path Align-R Microwave Antenna Path Alignment Test Sets. Tower installation crews can now perform the entire alignment process themselves, up the tower, at the antenna, without the need of additional ground technicians, equipment, or indeed, even the waveguides or radios installed.

By Fernando Torrelio, is President and Chief Engineer of Aurora Genesis Communications Inc., a microwave, cellular, PCS, & LMDS engineering, maintenance, installation, and testing company supporting the technical requirements of the wireless communications industry.

Military communications and intelligence-collection functions, traditionally associated with fixed sites and large platforms, are being pushed to tactical vehicles and sophisticated Unmanned Autonomous Vehicles (UAVs). This results in more C5ISR systems being installed on mobile platforms. Whether in the air, on land, or at sea, these vehicles will impart shocks and vibrations to their electronics, sometimes severely. In high vibration environments, the system designer must account for induced phase noise which can drastically affect overall performance. This white paper discusses the challenges of keeping low noise signals pure in any environment.

As the healthcare industry embraces technology to improve patient care and reduce costs, integrating disparate systems is critical for maximizing performance. Something as simple as a common basis for time-keeping can make a difference in records accuracy, device and system interoperability, security, regulatory compliance, and overall efficiency of operations. As technology implementations are network centric, time-keeping in software and hardware can be easily synchronized to the official worldwide time standard.

The Autonomous Distress Tracking (ADT) mandate is part of the Global Aeronautical Distress and Safety System (GADSS) initiative launched by ICAO after several accidents where downed aircraft could not be located at all, or only after long and expensive search efforts.

While most airlines have already complied with the normal tracking mandate due by the end of 2018, the ADT requirement for January 2021 is approaching fast. It is designed to improve the location of aircraft in the critical phase, when the aircraft is in distress, anywhere in the world.

If you are in the data center business, you’re faced with a long list of customer demands as businesses and entire industries move operations to the cloud. But you’re also facing an increasingly competitive landscape where offering the best service and greatest value is paramount. Balancing what you can offer customers and at what cost can be complicated, to say the least. An often overlooked service offering, one which provides a large value to customers at a low cost to providers, is Time as a Service (TaaS).

Traditional time and frequency distribution is defined by splitting and amplifying a signal to as many devices as needed. The distribution amplifier became a mainstay in precision time and frequency systems. Today there is greater access to precision timing considering more clocks in space transmitting global navigation signals and more network connectivity able to maintain higher levels of timing accuracy. A new generation of master clocks is capable of leveraging these trends while offering flexibility to generate the signal types and quantities wherever needed. Distribution amplifiers can still be an important “brick” in the system to meet needs for redundancy, reliability and cost-efficiency. This white paper describes the issue of providing precise time and frequency signals of the type and quantity needed by the application using commercial-off-the-shelf devices from Spectracom.

Those in the business of measuring time are familiar with the saying, “If you have one clock, you know what time it is. If you have two, well…”. Time synchronization is the ability for all clocks to have the same time. But what time is it? If your time synchronization deployment uses time from the internet, your organization may be at risk. Official time provided by a GPS-based network appliance is a time source that you can trust.

This Orolia Tech Brief explores the basic steps for maintaining security using a network-connected time server and looks at different ways to achieve resiliency in PNT. As an example, we will start with our SecureSync® Time Server product line to demonstrate how to maintain security with this network-connected device.

As GPS receivers are built into more mission-critical devices for difficult application environments, and designed with the emerging capabilities of a multitude of GNSS constellations and augmentation systems, developers and manufacturers need better ways to guarantee performance. That’s where a GPS simulator comes in.

Reliance on GNSS is now commonplace. However, all GNSS systems share a common vulnerability: their signals are very weak. GNSS satellites operate from Mid-Earth Orbit (MEO), approximately 20,000-25,000 km above the earth, to provide the best coverage and geometry for triangulation. As such, the transmitted signal is extremely weak upon arrival at the surface of the earth – so weak that it is weaker than the surrounding radio noise. Special signal processing techniques recover the GNSS signal from the background noise, but the weak signal strength at the user’s receivers makes GNSS navigation very susceptible to interference.

The traceability of time synchronization: This document briefly discusses the differences between a time source from within the network compared to outside the network with considerations for traceability for a network deployment of network time protocol (NTP).

A key feature of the concept of the connected car is accurate Positioning, Navigation and Timing technology. These must be more reliable and accurate than ever before, and they must co-exist with a multitude of other types of sensors and the computational loads associated with them. This white paper explores the trends relative to the big-picutre of intelligent transportation systems.

In January 2018, MiFID II RTS 25 compliance began, including five requirements for timing synchronization. Use this detailed checklist to make sure that you’re aware of the key considerations, your timing chain is ready and you're fully compliant.

New regulations from MiFID II in Europe to the Consolidated Audit Trail in the US mandate that reportable events must be timestamped to much more accurate levels than ever before and that regulated organizations must have a clear understanding of time for all information they are required to report. Europe’s MiFID II, in particular — which came into force on January 3, 2018 — is far more prescriptive with regards to timestamping, as defined by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) within RTS 25.

Positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) services are indispensable, and providing trusted, resilient PNT solutions requires us to look beyond individual systems and methodologies to focus upon the user. An architecture that can meet this demand must include multiple systems with diverse technologies so that any single threat or source of disruption can be mitigated. This document discusses how signaling technologies such as GNSS, eLoran and STL are the complementary components of this architecture.

The last decade has brought a paradigm shift in computing systems from single processor devices — whose performance plateaued — to distributed computing systems. In distributed systems, nodes execute concurrently with limited information about what the other nodes are executing at the moment. A key component of distributed coordination is the enforcement of consistent views at all nodes for the ordering of significant events. To this end, events are "timestamped" with logical counters or — increasingly lately — with tightly-synchronized physical time.

Today's time sensitive networks rely on available and accurate positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) signals to provide leaders with the information required to make timely and effective decisions. The proliferation of GNSS-degrading and denying devices across state and non-state actors put this critical information capability in jeopardy. Learn how a combination of alternative PNT signals with traditional GNSS references makes PNT applications resilient against jamming and spoofing.